And on it goes. As a sort of follow-up to my earlier Runescape post, here is another! Runescape is definitely a love/hate relationship for me. I’ve been playing for over nine years… To the sad tune of 8,428 hours (yes, that works out to two plus hours a day, every day for nine years).
I originally looked into Runescape in summer 2008, after I’d gone through the Balder’s Gate series about 7 times. I just couldn’t take playing the exact same game all over again, so I looked around for options. I read a bit about Runescape and was intrigued. Aside from some time I had spent playing Q3A against online opponents, I had never played an online game before, and nothing like an electronic RPG with other people. I was interested in the nonlinear aspect, the “never finishing the game” aspect, and the skilling sounded interesting (especially Smithing). So I tried it out. This was right about when the HD version was released, but it turns out that I didn’t have access to that version (I think it was because I was on a Mac? Maybe had to do with membership as well, I don’t recall). Anyway, the non-HD version just looked too lame for me, so I moved on.
The next year, I tried it again and, as the fullscreen HD mode was available, I fell right in. I liked it quite a bit, I found some skilling aspects that I enjoyed (even though they were all a bit grindy), realized that I didn’t enjoy combat, and fell in with some other players. And that’s where I’ve been all this time. The first 3ish years, the game stayed pretty stable and I happily plodded along. After that though, starting in 2012, there have been some changes for the better (nearly all of which are graphical) and (too) many changes for the worse (all of which are gameplay related and are somewhat detailed in this post). And now it’s at a point where I hardly want to play anywhere. I do still log in daily and half-assedly grind out a couple of routines, mainly because I am on the verge of a number of milestones (lvl 120 Smithing, 1 bil total exp, 1 bil coins, ten years playing). But some of the changes in the last six years I just can hardly stand: the rampant focus on MTX, the buying of exp points, the overwhelming amount of cosmetics and pets, and worse of all, the nerfing of basically every skilling method. For example, my skill of choice (Firemaking)… When I started really training it, it took multiple clicks to burn a single log, and you had to be very conscious of the space around you to make sure you had enough space to effectively burn a whole load of logs. You had to have a tinderbox in your inventory, and you’d click the tinderbox, then click a log. It would light a fire on the ground and move you one space over, then you’d click the tinderbox again, and click another log, etc etc. You had to click constantly. Now? You can fill your inventory with logs (no tinderbox needed as ones always on your toolbelt) and one click to a bonfire and the whole load gets slowly burned and you don’t even need to look at the screen for a couple of minutes… No moving involved, no watching, no more clicking… But nearly all skills have had this happen. The game has become too easy, too boring, and too obnoxious. Yes, in general one can still train the old ways, but having the new ways in game kinda spoils the whole “achievement” of hitting milestones.
They did release OSRS (Old School), which is a 2007 version, which I think is “better” in terms of P2W and MTX, but I can’t go back to those graphics again.
Darkscape was the bomb. It was a very short lived version of Runescape 3, without the cosmetics, without the mtx, and with an added air of realistic danger (as players could attack other players almost anywhere… Not my thing, but it made skilling more exciting!). I loved it, and it was closed down after just a few months. That was kinda the last straw for me (even though it was a couple of years ago), because it showed me how cool the game could be with the new graphics and gameplay that wasn’t MTX based, and then took it away.
I would, however, be willing to leave Runescape if I could only find an MMOPRG with no MTX, limited cosmetics, and skills. I’ve read about some, like FFIV, but it seems like they all focus on Combat, and i’m just not interested in that. I’m a solo (non-team) player who just wants a cool looking environment in which I can skill some mundane skills. Anyone? Anything?
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